Inspiration, ideas and information to help women build public speaking content, confidence and credibility. Denise Graveline is a Washington, DC-based speaker coach who has coached more than 100 TEDMED and TEDx speakers--many featured on TED.com--and prepared speakers to testify before the U.S. Congress, appear on national television, and deliver industry keynotes. She offers 1:1 coaching and group workshops in public speaking, presentation and media interview skills to both men and women.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Do you know women you want to encourage in public speaking? That might mean you, and it might mean women in your life. While you're making your list and checking it twice this holiday season, think about gifts that will inspire, educate and assist a speaker. Here are my favorites, and this week, you may want to check Amazon's Black Friday deals and specials for more ideas:

Want to stop shuffling papers or have lots of speeches--yours or your inspirations--at your fingertips without carrying a lot of paper? The Kindle wireless reading device is for you. It stores hundreds of books and documents, so you can load it with some of the inspiring speaking books noted below, plus PDF or Word documents with your own speeches--then adjust the type size for readability, and have the device read your speech aloud so you can hear it as practice. It eliminates shuffling papers or losing a page when you speak, too. Try the six-inch version, which is no more obvious than an index card in your hand and has worldwide wireless service, or go for the larger 9.7-inch Kindle DX with wireless in the U.S. only. Both now offer a horizontal as well as vertical display. Or choose yourself some books in the Kindle bookstore. The Kindle is one of my favorite speaking tools.

Organizers and program chairs often want to reward speakers, especially if their speaking's a volunteer effort. Go with a gift card so the speaker can choose a book or product that will aid her next effort.

Say It Plain: Live Recordings of the 20th Century's Great African-American Speeches: A Book-and-CD Setsets right the imbalance in many collections of great speeches by focusing on African-American voices. Women in this inspiring collection include Fanny Lou Hamer, Barbara Jordan, and Mary McLeod Bethune. This is great for a speaker who wants to understand the great speakers who came before her and quote them in her own speeches--and a wonderful set of model speeches, too. The CD will let you hear the delivery, a real advantage when you're shaping your own speaking style.

She knew she'd made news, and history. But because she was outspoken, she wasn't considered suitable as a good example. Now, a children's book that won the National Book Award, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, is giving Colvin what's long overdue: credit for being the first to test the Jim Crow laws by sitting in the "white section" on a bus.

According to author Phillip Hoose, quoted in this article in today's New York Times, “[civil rights leaders] worried they couldn’t win with her....Words like ‘mouthy,’ ‘emotional’ and ‘feisty’ were used to describe her.” Also in the article, Colvin says today, “Maybe by telling my story — something I was afraid to do for a long time — kids will have a better understanding about what the civil rights movement was about.” But, told for years that she shouldn't draw attention to herself, she even asked the author whether he thought the publisher could get the book into schools. The article and book are an inspiring read, and a reminder why women should keep speaking up and speaking out.

Despite all the discussion, calls for apologies and outrage over this episode, I've yet to see observers pick up on an important point that Boyd herself makes: Some of the comments broadcast on Twitter by some of her audience members were objectifying and sexual in nature. Here's what she said:

I would *NEVER* have given my talk on race and class in such a setting. I shudder to think about how the racist language people used when I gave that talk would've been perceived on the big screen. Speaking of which...what's with the folks who think it's cool to objectify speakers and talk about them as sexual objects? The worst part of backchannels for me is being forced to remember that there are always guys out there who simply see me as a fuckable object. Sure, writing crass crap on public whiteboards is funny... if you're 12. But why why why spend thousands of dollars to publicly objectify women just because you can? This is the part that makes me angry....I don't want to be objectified when I'm speaking - either as a talking head or a sexual toy. I want to inspire, to invite you to think, to spark creative thoughts in your head.

Told you she was unflinching.

Unfortunately, I can't pull up the offensive tweets to show you, due to technical problems on Twitter today (but if someone has preserved this part of the Twitterstream, I welcome hearing from you with a link, or from audience members who recall these particular tweets). UPDATE: It was later found that the men in question deleted their offensive string of tweets. At some points during Boyd's talk, the projected Twitterstream was taken down due to the offensive nature of the comments, then projected again when the audience objected.

I'll leave it to the psychoanalysts, attorneys and academics to analyze whether the sexual comments from the audience, broadcast as they were online and to the attendees in the room, constituted narcissism, slander, hate speech or all three. For me, the episode throws into high relief an issue about women and public speaking that generally goes undiscussed, as it has in the hundreds of reflections on this conference: Public speaking is uncomfortable for many women because they sense (or know from experience) that they'll be seen as sexual objects, and it's considered acceptable to treat them that way, in part, because they've put themselves forward as speakers.

Talk about discouraging women to speak. In 2009, we're seeing yet again an issue that has plagued women speakers since the days of ancient Greece and Rome: Attempting to silence women by treating them as sexual objects (or hysterics, or other negatives). This chapter in Kathleen Hall Jamieson's excellent book Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmakingdiscusses this topic in detail, but the chapter's first lines sum it up: "History has many themes. One of them is that women should be quiet." If you want to understand the spotty and difficult history of women and public speaking, that chapter's an excellent short course.

Danah Boyd herself was the object in her talk, for some men in her audience. Not a researcher, not a colleague, but an object.

The silence around this issue is all the more striking because this Web 2.0 Expo experience gives us two unique windows into the minds of the speaker and the audience. If the Twitter feed weren't public, those crude thoughts would've been known only by those thinking them--and the speaker would have had nothing to react to in her blog post. In a way, I'm grateful for this public meltdown, because it lets us put this common but undiscussed issue on the table, where women can face it and, perhaps, deal with it. I don't think we can change people's thoughts, by a long shot. But we need to be willing to talk about the issue. If we don't, it will remain one of those vague reasons women feel uncomfortable about public speaking, but aren't sure why. In fact, if the offensive tweets are removed, as they might well be, Boyd's willingness to write about them could be the only record we have--underscoring the importance of making these issues public.

And for those reading this who wonder, "Is this really a problem? I've never experienced it," let me just say that this blog--which aims to offer good advice and information to all speakers, male or female--came about because of the number of women who come to me for training saying things like, "They told me my presentations aren't sexy enough," or "My boss thinks I should wear skirts when I'm making a presentation or a speech." And that's in the 21st century. It's not the only gender issue women face in speaking, but it's a major one.

Kudos to Boyd, not just for her excellent research, but her willingness to speak frankly, allowing us to have a discussion. Please share your thoughts and additional information about this episode, or what you've experienced directly, in the comments.

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